


Strong Virgo Vibes

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [12]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Unintentional Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 23:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20199640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.August 1972: Pedicure





	Strong Virgo Vibes

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how many ways I can keep telling you guys that I love you. But I freaking love you and kiss all of your faces. This fic may seem familiar if you were following me on Tumblr a few months ago, but it is reworked a bit.

Steve was starting to wonder if maybe they’d been living together for too long. Not because either of them had anywhere else to go or anyone to move on toward. Not even because they were getting under each other’s skin.

Well.

They were. Or at least _she_ was getting under _his_ skin in a way she hadn’t for the last two years. He wasn’t sure when it started, but it felt like suddenly Darcy was _everywhere_, all the time. 

He couldn’t remember the two of them ever bumping into each other as much as they had in the three weeks since he’d gotten out of the hospital. The apartment had always been uncomfortably small, but lately it felt like he did nothing except physically move Darcy out of his way. In the hallway. In the kitchen. And even now, when she wasn’t in his space at all, it still felt like she was too close.

Or maybe he was just noticing her more.

Like right now, for instance. When he was trying to read, and she was on the opposite end of the couch with her bare feet on the coffee table. From the corner of his eye, he saw her leaning forward with difficulty. Heard every little sound of effort and frustration she was making. Could catalogue the way her hair was falling into her face, the way she was biting her lip.

It was all incredibly distracting.

“What are you doing?” he asked finally, when he’d read the same sentence three times in a row.

Darcy sat up, almost breathless. “I’m trying to paint my toenails.”

He raised an eyebrow and noticed the bottle of bright pink polish in her hand. The terribly uneven first coat she’d managed to smear on her toes. “Is it usually such a loud activity?”

She gave him a light glare—a half-glare, at best. “It is when you’re being suffocated by your own tits, yes.” She sighed and looked back at her feet. She wiggled her toes against the glass. “Guess this is as good as it’s going to get.”

It was his turn to sigh before he was setting his book down and holding out a hand without realizing it.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I can deal with an ugly pedicure—go back to your book.”

“The book is boring,” he said honestly. “Gimme.”

Darcy hesitated for another second before she leaned across the couch to drop the sealed bottle in his hand. It was another few seconds of shuffling and with a smile she attempted to smother between her lips that she’d turned to face him and deposited her feet onto the pillow he’d pulled into his lap. He didn’t see any remover or cotton balls, so he was just going to have to deal with the first coat and do the best he could to fix it from there. Steve started with the pinky toe of her right foot and applied a nice, even layer of polish before she cleared her throat and brought his gaze up to her face. “Thanks,” she said quietly. “I hate doing it myself.”

He smiled back and moved onto her next toe. “I know,” he assured her. Because he did. Because he’d noticed her struggling every time she had attempted this task on her own and now, with her looking at him like he’d just made her day, Steve wasn’t sure why it had taken him this long to offer to do it for her.

“What’s so boring about your book?” she asked as she reached for the glass of iced tea sweating on the table.

He glanced back over to the book on Churchill she’d found in a box at a yard sale a few days before he’d been hospitalized and shrugged. “I like a biography as much as the next guy,” he said. “But this one’s pouring the sugarcoat a little too thick.” He shrugged again. “The movie does a little bit better job of showing what he was really like, I think.”

Darcy looked up. “There’s a movie? Who plays him?”

“Gary Oldman.”

She smiled. “Is he great?”

Steve shrugged. “He’s always great.”

“Remind me to find you some fiction next time,” she said. “I, on the other hand, am going to keep plowing through my own little stack of biographies until I run out.”

He groaned at the devilish sparkle in her eye as he finished his first pass of her right foot. “You have to stop reading those.”

“I absolutely will not,” Darcy insisted with a giggle. “They’re too much fun.”

He sighed. “Which one are you on now?”

Still grinning, Darcy reached for her bag and retrieved the slim paperback she’d started the day before. “_Steve Rogers: The Heart Behind the Shield_.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“It’s my favorite so far,” she insisted. “They went on a deep-dive about your pre-war life.”

He glanced up from her left pinky toe and quirked an eyebrow. “How deep?”

“They published your report cards and art school transcripts.”

He frowned. “Who in the hell would care about that?”

Darcy scoffed and opened to her last dog-eared page. “I care deeply about the fact that you were a _‘promising and gifted artist who chose to dedicate himself to his studies rather than expanding his social circle beyond a few close friends_.’”

He kept his focus on her nails as he shook his head. “That’s a very nice way of saying ‘couldn’t get a date to save his life’.”

She giggled again. “And there’s all kinds of personal stories from your old school friends. It’s very sweet.”

He frowned again. “Like who?”

“Uh…” she flipped to earlier in the book. “Max Racynzski?”

“He beat me up three times a week all through grade school,” he said indignantly. “I can’t imagine what kind of sweet personal stories he had to share.”

“Oddly enough, he doesn’t mention that,” Darcy frowned and flipped to another page. “What about Joe Loganni?”

“Stuffed me into a locker with old gym clothes. And locked it.”

Her pout intensified. “Betty Costello?”

He shook his head again. “Told me she’d only go to a dance with me if I was six inches taller.”

Darcy turned another page. “What about Midge Katz?” she asked. “Please tell me the Jewish girl was nice to you at least.”

Steve paused, the brush suspended above the nail of her middle toe. He sat up again and tilted his head, trying to connect Midge’s name to anything other than… “Uh, yeah,” he admitted with a half-smile. “Midge was nice. She had a crush on Bucky, but she was still nice to me even after he stopped calling her. I think we had…” he paused. “Does it say what class we had together? I think it was painting.”

She consulted her book. “Painting. Yup. And thank God,” she added. “Because the goyim being shitty to you I expect and can deal with. But not the Jews.” She dropped the book onto the coffee table. “And I don’t think I can read anymore knowing this is full of lies.”

Steve smiled and returned to the task at hand. “If you’re that curious,” he reminded her. “You could just ask me for all the petty details of my life.”

When he glanced up again, she looked like she was fighting a smile. “Fine,” she said after a moment. “I’ll just go directly to the source from now on.” Another thought blossomed in her eyes. “Speaking of lies. How old are you, actually?”

“I’m—” Steve stopped and frowned. “Honestly, I’m not even a hundred percent sure anymore.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Not helpful,” she declared. “I have to heist on Friday if you have to look legit by Monday,” she reminded needlessly. As if they hadn’t been talking about and planning said heist for the last three weeks—about her taking an enormous risk so he could present a handful of fake documentation at an interview with the Skyline school board. “I need to know what date to put on your birth certificate. C’mon,” she gave him a jolt with her heels. “How old are you? And do you have a birthday preference? You give off exceptionally strong Virgo vibes for a Cancer—but I’ll put down whatever you want.”

“I—" he shook his head, deciding that dismissing her interest in zodiac traits wasn’t going do either of them any favors. “I don’t care,” he decided. “As long as it’s not a glaringly obvious national holiday.”

“Doable,” she said with a single nod. “So how old are you? Exactly?”

“Well…I mean, technically? I’m a hundred and four, I guess?” he frowned again. “Or. I was. In 2023. Which would make me a hundred and six now. But since it’s 1972…wouldn’t that make me fifty-three?” He looked up, concerned. “Why does fifty-three feel older than a hundred and six?”

Darcy did not answer that. “Still not helpful,” she assured him. “How old are _you_, Steve? In like… body years?”

He squinted. “Like, how old do I feel? I don’t know. Three hundred and sixteen?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll just change a one to a four,” she decided before she stopped herself. “No. Wait. A three,” she nodded. “That makes you thirty-three now. Depending on what month Steven Grant was born; possibly thirty-four. Does that work for you?”

That still felt wrong enough to do quick subtraction in his head. “Except I’m thirty-seven,” he added. “If we’re using the time in the ice as a pause. Then yeah, physically, I’m thirty-seven.”

“You’re about to be kicked in the face, is what you are,” Darcy said quickly. “Do you want to be thirty-three or thirty-seven?”

“Thirty-three is fine,” he said a little too quickly and asked, before she could comment on his vanity, “Are you keeping your same birthday?”

“When there’s a golden opportunity to indulge in two birthday cakes every year?” Darcy scoffed. “I should think not.”

“At least we’re covering the most important parts of a fake identity.” 

She pursed her lips and titled her head to the side, studying him as she so often did. “Why didn’t you keep track of how old you are?”

He looked up from shaking the bottle of pink polish to coat the little brush again and shrugged. “It’s not like it really matters, does it?”

She frowned. “Of course it matters. Did you just stop celebrating your birthdays after you woke up?”

“No,” he shook his head. “It just…” he stopped. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “After I woke up it felt like...”

“Like what?” Darcy prodded when he’d trailed off for too long.

“Like I was ten times the commodity I’d been before I crashed,” he said. “You know what I mean?” He wasn’t sure he could explain this in a way that didn’t make him sound like he was still whining about what had happened. But Darcy didn’t look like she thought he was whining. She looked curious, and a little sympathetic. “People would want to celebrate but it wasn’t—” he stopped again. “I guess before,” he started over. “When I was growing up. Bucky and I would celebrate our birthdays and it was just because it’s nice to tell someone—on their birthday—'hey, I’m glad you were born’. But after I woke up and I became part of the team, Tony—”

“I _knew_ he had something to do with this,” Darcy interrupted, shaking her head. “Let me guess, he’d throw big, crazy, patriotic birthday parties and pretend like they were for you?”

Steve gave her a wry half-smile. “Something like that. But they weren’t for me, of course—they were for him. And even after we weren’t…” he glanced down with a frown. “After he stopped doing that—anything to do with my birthday was kind of a joke.” He looked up to her puzzled expression and shrugged again. “You know—youngest old man in the world? All the senior citizen jokes? It just…” he sighed. “Just turned into something I couldn’t find a reason to celebrate any more, I guess. Plus, when you’re an international fugitive and then on the first wave of the clean-up crew of a global extinction…cake and streamers don’t really make the list of top priorities.”

Darcy digested all of this with a slow nod. She took a long sip of her iced tea before she set the glass back on the table and cleared her throat. “Steve?” She waited until he looked back up before she smiled. “I’m glad you were born.”

Steve dropped his eyes back down to her toenails and took particular care with the swipes of paint he applied to her big toe, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the blush he could feel on his cheeks. He couldn’t help his smile though, as he tried to remember the last time someone had told him that. “I’m glad you were born, too,” he admitted quietly.

She waited until he finished the last swipe of pink polish before she craned her neck and wiggled her toes. “_So_ much better than the job I was doing,” she admitted. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, leaning over her legs to set the small bottle back on the coffee table. He sat back, suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands. He’d been about to let them rest on Darcy’s ankles while her polish dried.

But that decision felt alarmingly more complicated than it should. Too comfortable.

But he _was_ comfortable, a voice reminded him. And judging by the way she was settled in on her side of couch, feet on his lap, appearing to have no plans to move anytime soon, she looked pretty comfortable too.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, waving a hand at him. “You okay?” she asked, regarding him with mild concern before she cracked a smile. “You’ve got pensive face.”

“I’ve always got pensive face,” he retorted immediately.

“Pensiv-_er_ face.”

He smiled back and shook his head, forcing those thoughts away. “I’m fine,” he promised, pleased when she changed the subject to what they should do about dinner.

They’d definitely been living together for too long.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mention this in the last chapter, but Skyline High School is totally real place and therefore I must apologize for the way I'll be portraying it--though in a favorable light, I'm certain it will be riddled with inaccuracies. Just a heads up. 
> 
> Also, figuring out Steve's age was WAY harder than it probably needed to be and I borrowed the idea about the biographies from a scene from The American President.
> 
> <3 <3 <3 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it, my sweet kittens.


End file.
